Nine seconds of silence.
After Ben Youngs asks whether Lewis Moody ever saw a risk to playing rugby, his former team-mate takes his time before beginning his answer.
There is a lot to consider.
Moody played alongside Youngs at the highest level. He won 71 caps for England. He toured with the British and Irish Lions. He won domestic and European titles as part of a notoriously hard-edged Leicester team.
Through it all, Moody was famed for his full-throttle commitment. His disregard for pain and his endless appetite for collisions and close-quarters combat earned him the nickname ‘Mad Dog’.
In his playing days, the only risk Moody seemed to be concerned with was that some ounce of effort would be left unspent in pursuit of victory.
Looking back, the 47-year-old says it wasn’t that simple.
“I do think I was very aware of the risks rugby presented, when you go and smash yourself into another human being week in week out, day in day out,” Moody tells a new BBC documentary – Ben Youngs Investigates: How Safe Is Rugby?
“I think I was acutely aware of the risks that come with injury and concussion, but I was happy that the reward and the joy of playing the sport far outweighed any of those.
“I enjoyed what I did so much that I was prepared to put up with that, and I would do again. I loved it… I absolutely loved it.”
Last year, Moody was diagnosed with motor neurone disease (MND) – a degenerative muscle-wasting condition.
Several rugby players have had the same news.
Rugby league legend Rob Burrow died in June 2024. Scotland international Doddie Weir and former Springbok Joost van der Westhuizen also died with the condition.
Ed Slater, whose career at Leicester overlapped with Moody’s by a season, retired from playing in July 2022 after tests showed he too had MND.
There is no proven link between rugby of either code and MND, though elite athletes in general are disproportionally affected by the condition.
It is thought low levels of oxygen in the body during intense exercise damage motor neurone cells, triggering the disease in those who are susceptible either though genetics or environmental factors.
Despite that, Moody recognises rugby has become linked with MND in much of the public’s mind.
“I don’t get frustrated by it,” he says.
“It is an easy assumption to make, because you have had a couple of high-profile rugby players with MND, that playing rugby makes you more likely to get MND. But that is not the truth.
“The only link and connection to MND and sport is around extreme exertion. There are research papers out there that talk about the connections. If you speak to the scientists or clinicians in this space, there are multiple reasons MND occurs. It’s not one thing.”
